Cueca Sola

Monday, February 26, 2018

The era of Trump means being in a state of continuous outrage and despair. Here is the round up of outrage and despair today:

Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy whose mine blew up and killed 29 men is running for Senate. He calls himself a "political prisoner" for the one year he spend in prison as punishment for killing 29 men.

The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL are returning to school today after a week of full throated activism and holding elected leaders to account - for which they received death threats from NRA supporters. Let that sink in - death threats for surviving a massacre at the hands of a semi-assault rifle toting gun man and have the temerity to say adults should do better.

One extremely rich man, an "Illinois Industrialist" named Richard Uihlein is almost single handedly financing an assault on organized labor by bankrolling anti-labor think tanks and politicians. Today a case goes before the Supreme Court that will cripple public sector unions by allowing workers to not pay union dues but still be represented by unions. I wonder how Richard "Hank Reardon" Uihlein would appreciate having the Supreme Court find that his customers can enjoy whatever good or service he provides without having to pay for it.

Trump is not behind all of this, he is just the titular head of a movement that reestablishes white men of privilege as the only people that matter. Starting with #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName, the narrative that people in this country are created and thought equal, judged only by their character, has been shown to be a lie. The murder of so many black men and women at the hands of the State caught on video and distributed via social media blasted through that narrative and demonstrated that contrary to what we, the so-called majority, would like to believe, all lives don't matter to the State. Followed by #MeToo and #TimesUp, the reality that patriarchy is still a closely held principle in this country and women are valued first and primarily for their appearance and sexual usefulness to powerful men. Women have no intrinsic human value, we are only meant to be playthings.

The massacre in Parkland made me realize something even more sad: no one matters. Black lives don't matter, women don't, children don't. Nobody matters. Only profit matters. Trump is the titular character of an ethic that rests on using others for your own gain. We are reaching peak capitalism where people, labor in the Marxist equation, are nothing but inputs to the capitalist. We don't matter. The 29 dead miners don't matter, the 17 dead high school students and the 20 dead first graders don't matter. The women whose lives were shattered by sexual abuse and exploitation don't matter, none of us do in this society of peak capitalism. What matters is the freedom and liberty to acquire wealth by any means necessary. That is the ethic and character of this nation now.

Where our founding fathers balanced liberty with the Enlightenment ideals of the social contract, Trump and his ilk, like Richard Uihlein and Wayne LaPierre, have abandoned any enlightenment ideals and embraced only the liberty to step on the necks of others to amass their wealth then weaponize it to use people to gain even more wealth and more power.

We need to protect and strengthen our solidarity. Their laws and rules are meant to weaken our connections to each other - splinter us and stratify our worthiness. None of us matter. Only all of us matter and we must matter together.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

The election of a Donald J. Trump has left me feeling
unmoored. Immediately following the election and all through the waning days of
Barack Obama’s lame duck presidency, I cast about blindly trying to understand
how this America that was revealed to me could have existed under my very nose.
I felt like a happily married woman who suddenly learns that her husband has
been carrying on an affair. The person you love is not the man of character
that you imagined, but rather he is someone small and selfish, driven by venal
desires. The America that I loved endeavored to be a beacon of liberty and
hope. Our exceptionalism wasn’t based on our consumerist striving, but rather
the ideals of equal opportunity and treatment under the law.

The daily assault on that image of my country has been a
challenge. The impulse to march, to protest, to resist is strong and I have
joined with many to honor that impulse. Marching on January 21st
with millions of other women across the world to register my disapproval of a
man who has built his personal brand and personal wealth on the denigration and
exploitation of others energized me and brought me comfort. Retweeting a snarky
meme provides momentary satisfaction, but as other mass movements over the last
decade have demonstrated – something different is required. Occupy hasn’t made
any progress toward income equality and BLM hasn’t stopped the state sanctioned
murder of black men and women.

The ancient contemplative practice of praying the Rosary has
given me comfort and provided a useful framework for resistance. When praying
the Rosary, we are called to consider the mysteries of the life of Christ. When
I am feeling particularly vulnerable and lost, I rely on a mash up of two
distinct modes of prayer, the Holy Rosary and the Ignatian Contemplation on the
life of Jesus. This morning, as I praying on the Glorious mysteries, I
considered how the disciples must have felt following the arrest and execution
of Jesus. Where only a week before they had entered Jerusalem in triumph, they
were now scattered, frightened and lost. In Ignatian contemplative fashion, as
I prayed on the first decade and the mystery of Christ’s resurrection, I imaged
the women entering the cave expecting to perform the care taking duties of women
the world over. In their despair, they leaned into the comfort of providing the
customary preparation of the body for burial.

There’s a lesson there. Our traditions and our customs are
the wide path to the way forward. The women, along with the other disciples who
happened to be male, rode into Jerusalem feeling victorious but watched in fear
as the people turned on them and their message of liberation. If I look back to
the week before the 2016 election, I was concerned about how to reach the Trump
voters never imagining that they had no need for my ministrations. In
retrospect, I cringe at my arrogance while I despair of the venality and
grotesqueness of this new world.

My solace has been to follow the example of my foremothers
at the tomb. While the men fled and hid, the women were steady in their
commitment to the traditions and values of their community, and steadfast in
their belief in Jesus. Rather than flee, they confronted the danger of being
associated with the Nazarene and went to the tomb to care for him and prepare
his body for burial. When they found the tomb empty, they realized the miracle
and spread the word, changing the world forever.

We must be steady and we must trust that our values stand on
their own. The deficient values of Trump and his enablers in Congress will not
withstand the values of thoughtful people who believe in the America of
opportunity and equality. Our examples of caring for the poor, the sick, the
stranger is our greatest weapon in this battle for the heart and soul of our
nation.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Looking back on election coverage over that last year and a
half, I am embarrassed by the arrogance. Aaron Sorkin wrote a letter to his
wife and daughter apologizing for Donald Trump and promising to do a better job
of protecting them. I could write a similar letter but instead of apologizing
to my daughters for not being a better liberal, I would apologize for being
such an elitist asshole. And if you live in the same NPR, MSNBC, Late Night
Comedy and New York Times echo chamber that I live in, you just might be an
elitist asshole, too.

Eight years ago, on November 5th, 2008 I woke up
elated. I took my car in to have the oil changed and there was an older black
woman waiting with her grandson and she was showing him the photo of President
elect Barack Obama addressing the crowd. “Yes We Can” was the headline. I
caught her eye and we shared a smile. For the first time in my life, I didn’t
feel embarrassed in the presence of a black person. For the first time, I felt
like the stain of privilege and implied racism wasn’t the first thing she saw
because this white nation elected a black man to the highest office in the
land. I felt pride in my country that perhaps wasn’t as racist and bellicose as
I thought.

I was elated when the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was
signed and when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed. I even changed my Facebook
profile picture to the rainbow filter when Same Sex Marriage became the law of
the land. I smugly pointed to the stemming of the tide of widespread job loss
and the slow but steady economic recovery as evidence of the superiority of the
Democrats and the strength of the liberal agenda. The questions about the
President’s citizenship and demands to produce his birth certificate were just indications
that his opponents were ignorant racists.

While I still believe that questions about the President’s
legitimacy are indicative of ugly racism, I also think we should have been much
more gracious in our victories and worked harder to bring people along with us.
Instead, a cottage industry based on making fun of poor white people in the
middle of the country emerged. We have spent the last eight years reflecting
the religious and cultural diversity that we on the left embrace and admire
while mocking the people clinging to their guns and their religion. “Modern
Family” wins Emmys year after year while “Duck Dynasty” and “Here Comes Honey
Boo Boo” are snarky punchlines and Tea Party favorites like Sarah Palin and
Michelle Bachman are ignorant boobs on “Saturday Night Live”.

Over the past few years, more than a few of my right of
center friends and family members have said, “This is not the America that I
grew up in…” or “It’s time we take our country back” and silently rolled my
eyes. Now that my candidate lost, I hear myself utter the exact same sentiments
almost verbatim. I woke up disoriented and shocked on Wednesday morning,
disbelief that a gaudy reality TV star who does not share my values will be the
President of the United States. It’s
like I woke up in the Upside Down from “Stranger Things” – everything is in the
same place, but I’m on a different plane or frequency where everything is dark
and ugly. But for many, the Upside Down for them is Obama’s vision for America.
I don’t understand why they feel that way, but I would like to learn.

I find Donald Trump abhorrent and feel betrayed by my
neighbors and friends who voted for him. I struggle to understand how anyone
could vote for such a gross and venal man. I can’t bear the thought of
listening to him for the next four years. What I have come to realize, though,
is that there are many in this country who have the same sense of loathing for
President Obama, Secretary Clinton and all of us “elites” who have been
pointing and laughing at them for the past eight years.

There is a lot of work to be done to stitch our commonweal
together but I would like to make a radical proposal: Let’s stop calling each
other names and be willing to listen to each other and feel each other’s pain.

Monday, September 12, 2016

I understand the visceral reaction that many have to the collective
protest of our National Anthem and Flag. When my home team quarterback Colin
Kaepernick set off the firestorm by sitting for the anthem, I felt stung and my
sensibilities were offended. Kaepernick, I thought, is an example of our
meritocracy – a black man growing up in a struggling Central Valley town who by
hard work and skill was able to lead his team to America’s greatest stage. He
is an example of America when it works. My reaction was anger and annoyance,
how dare he insult our vets when he has benefited so much from their sacrifice?
Who the hell is he to complain? He seems to have it pretty good…

First of all, why not Kaepernick? Why not use his position
as a successful (albeit currently challenged) athlete on the national stage to
make a strong statement on behalf of those who are silenced? Until he sat down
for the anthem, no one was paying any attention to him, either. Tweets do not
make a movement. Tweets and Facebook posts did call attention to the number of
black men who are killed in the street by police officers who later face no
trial of their peers. A movement erupted but the comfortable ignored it or made
fun of it, insisting that all lives matter when clearly they do not. If the
lives of these black men mattered, then there would have been indictments and
trials.

He sat and we finally paid attention but we still ignore the
statement. We latch on to the hagiography of what the flag means to us without
truly questioning what it should mean. Kaepernick made me think hard and my
mind was changed. Fundamentally, we a nation of ideals. We a nation based on
the political ideology of equality under the law. We are not a nation defined by our borders
and our cultural identity. We are not a nation defined by nationalism; we are
defined by our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution that codifies
our equality under the law.

By taking a knee for the anthem, Kaepernick asserts those ideals
and makes a strong and painful declaration that we are not living up to them. Our
nation was founded by those who wanted to leave behind the blood and boundary
nationalism of Europe. There is an England, there is a France, there is a Germany
that transcends the political system of the moment. Vichy France was never not
France and the Democratic Republic of Germany continued to be German even under
Soviet control. These were and continue to be nations that are defined by their
cultural identity and nationalism. We are not.

With my initial anger at Mr. Kaepernick I lost sight of
America’s great legacy. We are not a nation founded on boundaries and
ethnicity. We are a nation that is founded on the ideas of equality and
liberty. If the flag is only a symbol of the sacrifice of our soldiers during
war time, then we are nothing more than the physical borders that must be
protected, not our principles and not our ideals. Our nation is much greater
than our boundaries and we should demand respect for those ideals, especially from
sworn officers. Extrajudicial murders in black communities, carried out by the
very officers who are meant to protect us, are a perversion of the ideals our
nation is built on. The integrity of those ideals are more important than the
integrity of our national boundaries, if not more so.

Opening Day of the NFL season fell on the 15th
anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Nine Eleven.
Even after defending my quarterback for the last couple of weeks, I felt
ambivalent about the appropriateness of continuing the protest on a day where
our nation mourned the greatest attack on our national integrity since the
Second World War. Our homeland was attacked. We went to war to protect our
ideals and our way of life. Surely sitting down on 9/11 is disrespectful to
that memory, isn’t it? And yet, surely it is disrespectful to our ideals to
accept that entire communities are not afforded the rights enshrined in our
founding documents. To accept that citizens of this country can be killed with
impunity, where there is no accountability for the taking of their life, is to
deny the concept of our right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

If our flag doesn’t stand for those ideals, then what does
it really stand for?

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Jeb Bush was recently asked to clarify his
statements on single mothers in his book, “The Restoration of Shame”. In an amazing feat of political acrobatics,
Mr. Bush seemed to both back pedal and double down saying single moms face
challenges in the world we are in today (presumably a world of reduced economic
opportunities stemming from the collapse of the financial system at the tail
end of his brother’s turn as president) that hurt the prospects and limit the
possibilities of young people being able to live lives of meaning and
purpose.

Mr. Bush has it backwards.
Yes, being raised by a single mother reduces opportunity and possibility
but the conditions that are limiting are due to public policy that is
implemented specifically to censure and punish women for being single
mothers. In a New York Times editorial, Charles Blow points out that we spend energy blaming births to
unmarried women ( http://nyti.ms/1IWZ2gL ). I would say we blame unmarried
mothers. The way we treat them is part
of the punishment. Bush laments the
flagging sense of ridicule and shame heaped upon the irresponsible conduct of
unmarried mothers, but in the absence of shame and ridicule, what we have is
the punishment of seeing one’s children struggle in penurious circumstances and
reduced opportunities, all due to their mothers’ “poor choices”. Meanwhile, our society, our culture, makes
unintended pregnancies and births inevitable by limiting education about
reproductive health and even more so, limiting access to reproductive health
services – especially for poor young women whose future offspring will be most
impacted by the reduced circumstances and opportunities.

We are in a tenuous cultural space where feminism and the
sexual revolution have ruptured the former modified chattel model of marriage
where women traded their reproductive capabilities and caregiving services for
economic security for themselves and their children. Women are no longer ostensibly tied to the
father of their children, dependent on them for economic security, yet the
organization of our society is such that women, especially mothers, are
severely disadvantaged in the workplace, degrading the material well-being of
their children and even more so the mental and emotional well-being of their
family given the emotional stress of poverty. We have organized ourselves as a society in the worst
possible way to support children and families.
We have the dual sides of the pincers crushing families with free market
capitalist economic theory that pushes the cost of labor down to the lowest
point the market can bear; and women will accept less because .72 on the dollar
is better than .00. At the same time,
the free movement of capital to places with a lower cost of labor makes the
competition for jobs fierce for men and women, but due to the rupture of
chattel marriage many men no longer feel obligated to support their families
and women no longer feel compelled to remain with men who abuse drugs and alcohol
and are violent toward them and their children.
In Jeb Bush’s world, shame and ridicule would keep women locked in
marriage and keep men feeling responsible for supporting their families.

What he and others fail to see is the interlocking vice grip of the
free market capitalism that forced women into the workplace by gutting middle
class opportunities gained by organized labor coupled with the freedom of women to flee
unsafe or unsatisfying marriages. Thanks
to the global economy, men are no longer able to hold up their end of the
chattel marriage negotiation and require a partner's income. Ergo,
conservatives are in a pickle because on one hand, they want the cost of labor
to continue to decline, but the decline in wages makes the “traditional”
marriage arrangement untenable.

In our attempts to sustain traditional marriage, we make these macro policy decisions that punish some women
for unwanted pregnancies and their subsequent children are punished along with
them. I am certain that fathers and men
are punished as well for the “poor decisions” by being estranged from their
offspring and missing out on the edifying work of parenting and building a
family – but I was a single mother not an estranged father, so I can speak more
authentically on my reality. We do make
poor personal choices, but given the circumstances, the options we choose from are
limited and equally bad. The greater sin
is the choice we make as a society as we evolve from organizing our families
in one way to another.

We can recognize that we are liberated from an arrangement
based on women trading their caregiving for security. That was never fool proof and many women and
children were left the poorer for it, my own mother and grandmother
included. We should embrace that we are
no longer subject to such an arbitrary and insecure arrangement. We should embrace policies that recognize
families, irrespective of their make-up, as the foundation of our culture,
society and in this free-market capitalist democracy families are also the
foundation of our economy. A strong
family is the foundation of a strong economy, therefore, public policy should
support and strengthen families.

Seeing my friends with kids, I know that raising kids is the
time when the stress of all the familial responsibilities can become too much
to bear, leading to all sorts of ills; an increase in drug and alcohol use, abuse, violence, fractured relationships, anger, resentment or
simply alienation. These in turn can lead to
divorce and to single motherhood – the scourge of modern society, according to Mr. Bush.

The lack of access to reproductive health services also
contributes to unstable families.
Unplanned pregnancies can create families where there is no foundational
commitment between the parents. Access to free, long term birth control without
the slut shaming would reduce unplanned pregnancies and probably
abortions. But it would also take away
conservatives’ most potent tool in controlling women’s sexuality. Without the threat of an unplanned birth,
women will be free to have sex with whomever they choose. That’s the other side of the conservative
vise grip – cost of labor on one side and the conservative, religious social
mores on the other that fears women’s sexual liberation and freedom.

What Mr. Bush displays with his comments underscores the basic misogyny in our commonweal. Women's sexuality should be controlled and managed, women's reproductive rights should be controlled and managed and economically empowered women are more difficult to control and manage.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Let's Not Take Our County Back

Last night at the Working Partnerships USA reception, Zelica asked me what I
want to be when I grow up. I thought about the question and said some stuff,
but what I didn’t say was that when I grow up, I want to amplify my voice to
influence public policy on behalf of working families to forge a just and
equitable commonweal.

Somehow, regressive powers have seized a large swath of
public thought and are preying on people’s fears. First we laughed at the ridiculous buffoonery
and now we are scared. The GOP leaders
are really scared because their voters love Trump. But they are governed by their economic
interests and know a Trump presidency would be a disaster and embarrassment and
more importantly, very bad for their economic interests. Now they are preparing for a brokered convention.
That will reinforce everything the Trump base believes about Government and
Politicians. They are making their
voices heard and the GOP is proving to be as much of a bi-coastal elitist party
as the Democratic Party. It would be kind of funny if
their base wasn’t armed and dangerous. When the Democrats forced a brokered
convention in Chicago in 1968, the protesters showed up with angry voices and
flowers. These people will show up with legally purchased assault rifles and
the steely resolve to “take back our country”.

This is a distorted form of extreme patriarchy where more than a few of the GOP candidates believe they are inherently superior and there
are natural differences between “us” and “others”. It is the same rationale that was used to justify slavery – some races and religions are inherently inferior and
therefore must not be allowed to have influence or agency. There’s also a big dollop of misogyny for
good measure. For example, Trump “loves the women” but as works of art that exist for the
benefit of his male gaze. Unattractive women are an affront to him. He is
offended if a women who is old, fat or ugly gains a platform. That is the
America that they want to take us back to, where we all know our places and the
patrician white males’ place is right at the top by divine right.

Last night fed my soul and I want to see Silicon Valley
Rising as a counterpunch to the Fascist Tea Party. I’d like to see SVR
replicate like the Occupy movement but really contribute to policy changes in a
way Occupy couldn’t. It changed the conversation, but had little effect on the
body politic. On a national scale voter ID laws are disenfranchising black
voters, gerrymandered districts have guaranteed a GOP House in perpetuity and
our economy is built on the hardest working, most productive backs who receive
an ever smaller portion of the income generated by their labor.

That must
change and Silicon Valley Rising is an instrument of change.

Monday, September 8, 2014

The sports world is congratulating itself for the harsh punishment that the NFL is handing down to Ray Rice for the assault on his fiancée (now wife) in an elevator last February. Yahoo Sports published this excellent article that point by point illustrates the numerous ways that Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens, the National Football League, the District Attorney's Office and many others failed Ms. Palmer.

But look closely at the content on the right of the page listed under "Latest NFL Slideshows". There is a slideshow highlighting athletes who own their own sports franchises, and highlights from the week's games but insidiously - next to an article about a woman whose football player husband punched her in the face and dragged her out of the elevator like she was a rag doll - there are two slideshows of scantily clad women dancing for benefit of the male gaze.

The incongruence of the article about the victimization of Ms. Palmer next to slideshows of nearly nude dancers is tinny at best, sad and disgusting is more like it. The cheerleaders, like Ms. Palmer, are undeniably beautiful. But it is sad to see women relegated to a role of either dancing for male pleasure or punching bag/defender.

What is actually much worse than the slideshow (which, as I said, portrays beautiful women celebrating football) is to read the comments left by "fans". The hate and denigration directed at the women displays a deeply troubling misogyny that explains the mindset of the NFL fan that accepts the violence that star running backs and defensive ends direct toward their wives and girlfriends. That news of Ray Rice's assault on his wife is covered in the "Sports" section reinforces our society's acceptance of violence against women - it's all just part of the game.